2 Officers Charged In Ship Grounding

Readers: Last week I told you about the ocean liner S.S. Manhattan grounding off Singer Island on Jan. 12, 1941.
At high tide the next morning, Coast Guard ships threw lines and tried to pull the Manhattan free. But the 25,000-ton ship only dug in more, snapping the lines. About 200 passengers and a crew of 500 were offloaded to smaller boats, and all patrons were given refunds. Several found themselves spending their
vacations at the Palm Beach Biltmore instead of in California. Some made other travel arrangements, while others just went home. Three private tugs spent weeks removing tons of cargo, including more than 150 cars, as well as some 4,550 barrels of oil. They finally got the Manhattan free on Feb. 3, but damage, mostly to the two propellers and the starboard engine shaft, was about $1.2 million. It was towed to Brooklyn, not far from its namesake.
A board of inquiry charged Capt. George V. Richardson and first officer Joseph Burger with negligence.
Richardson pointed to his 21 years as a captain without incident. But the board said while he was in the wheelhouse in the nine minutes before the Manhattan grounded, he was not during the 47 minutes before that, as the boat made the precarious passage, zipping at more than 20 knots at a 45-degree
angle to the beach.
The board later suspended Richardson for eight months and Burger for one.
The Manhattan was refitted and in June 1941 was recommissioned, now in standard gray, as the Navy transport Wakefield.
It moved thousands of troops. After the war, the ship sat in the Hudson River until 1964, when it was sold for scrap for $263,000.

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